2000s SF film
Battlefield Earth, 2000, USA DIRECTED BY ROGER CHRISTIAN
When he wrote Battlefield Earth in 1982 L. Ron Hubbard said he knew he would "be accused of not including any of my serious work [Scientology] in this book, but I have just put on my professional writer's hat and written a science fiction novel." Then, exposing a masochistic streak, Dave Langford dutifully read the book So We Don't Have To (so I haven't). Inevitably, serious film critics with no particular love for a manufactured science fictional religion/cult surrounded the announcement of this film like hounds baying for blood even before it went into production, then have been congratulating themselves ever since on killing off the monster at birth. It had that Hollywood 'smell of death' about it, and they were right, of course, this is a pretty dire movie and best left forgotten, though there have been worse contemporary films made with smaller budgets that at least one remembers with some affection. This has none of that appeal, at least not yet; I suspect it may turn out to be the cult Plan 9 From Outer Space of this generation, though that may be an insult to the memory of Ed Wood. Battlefield Earth's director Roger Christian, not a Scientologist, had to quickly mount a defence which amounted to little more than "how dare they call my film a turkey", though he was right in saying it should be taken for what it is without any excess baggage informing our prejudices, much as we would watch a film with both a Jewish screenwriter and producer without crying "Judaism!". I avoided it when it came out, though I watched this now because it's good to crawl out of your comfort zone once in a while: eight years on it's hard to watch objectively without the clamour of its universal panning ringing in your ears - my favourite put-down is from Richard Roeper who placed it at number 5 on his list of "40 movies that linger in the back chambers of my memory vault like a plate of cheese left behind a radiator in a fleabag hotel."
If you do take it for what it is, it's a poorly realised far-future skiffy adventure, a colourful piece of pulp SF filmed with every single shot dutch-angled like a comic book. When the book was first written, John Travolta wanted to make the movie and star as Johnny Goodboy, the young hero, but could get no investors to back the project. When the movie was eventually made he was too old to play the part and instead opted to play the villain, Terl. Travolta is awful - but is he being ironic? - and part of anyone's reason for watching it now is to see how awful he really is (Get Shorty, at the other extreme, will always serve to show what he can do really well). Much of Patrick Tatopoulos's production design gets hidden behind the cheap effects instead of being shown off to proper advantage, but then even after just fifteen minutes it really is hard to care at all what happens to anyone or anything. It's hard to say why, except that maybe you never get under anyone's skin, there is too much emphasis on superficialities. Apart from Hubbard's hatred for psychoanalysts remaining as the name of the alien overlords, the Psychlos, I really couldn't detect anything subliminally Scientological in this at all. Hence this is not nearly as controversial a film as some made it out to be, which now leaves me doubly disappointed for having wasted two precious hours with only this short review to show for it. And this film was only the first half of the book.